Maze Runner: Femme Fatale
by sonderandsilience
Summary: I have this thing, right? Where I rewrite my favorite books that have a male lead, and give them a female protagonist. So now it is Marisa, not Thomas, who comes up in the Box and sets things in motion for the Gladers. How will things change in the series, when a girl is the one kicking ass?
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: I own nothing from the Maze Runner Trilogy. All rights to James Daschner and the writers of the Maze Runner movie. The idea of the story is to replace a male protagonist with a female protagonist and see where that takes the plotline of the story, so much of the content written by Daschner, meaning actual paragraphs and sentences, are the same. I give all credit to Daschner for the words he's written. I've made the obvious alterations (changing 'he' and 'him' to 'she' and 'her', etc.) but it's truly an A/U story, so I've put my own spin on much of it._

Chapter One

She began her new life standing up, surrounded by cold darkness and stale, dusty air.

Metal ground against metal; a lurching shudder shook the floor beneath her. She fell down at the sudden movement and shuffled backward on her hands and feet, drops of sweat beading on her forehead despite the cool air. Her back struck a hard metal wall; she slid along it until she hit the corner of the room. Sinking to the floor, she pulled her legs up tight against her body, hoping her eyes would soon adjust to the darkness.

With another jolt, the room jerked upward like an old lift in a mine shaft. Harsh sounds of chains and pulleys, like the workings of an ancient steel factory, echoed through the room, bouncing off the walls with a hollow, tinny whine. The lightless elevator swayed back and forth as it ascended, turning the girl's stomach sour with nausea; a smell like burnt oil invaded her senses, making her feel worse. She wanted to cry, but no tears came; she could only sit there, alone, waiting.

"Okay," she murmured to herself. "Calm down. Start with the basics. Start with what you know. My name is…" She trailed off. "My name is…" She tried again.

That was when she realized; she didn't remember anything about her life.

She didn't understand how this could be possible. Her mind functioned without flaw, trying to calculate her surroundings and predicament. Knowledge flooded her thoughts, facts and images, memories and details of the world and how it works. She pictured snow on trees, running down a leaf-strewn road, eating a hamburger, the moon casting a pale glow on a grassy meadow, swimming in a lake, a busy city square with hundreds of people bustling about their business.

And yet she didn't know where she came from, or how she'd gotten inside the dark lift, or who her parents were. She didn't even know her name. Images of people flashed across her mind, but there was no recognition, their faces replaced with haunted smears of color. She couldn't think of one person she knew, or recall a single conversation.

The room continued its ascent, swaying; she grew immune to the ceaseless rattling of the chains that pulled her upward. A long time passed. Minutes stretched into hours, although it was impossible to know for sure because every second seemed an eternity. No. She was smarter than that. Trusting her instincts, she knew she'd been moving for roughly half an hour.

Strangely enough, she felt her fear whisked away like a swarm of gnats caught in the wind, replaced by an intense curiosity. She wanted to know where she was and what was happening.

With a groan and then a clonk, the rising room halted; the sudden change jolted her from her huddled position and threw her across the hard floor. As she scrambled to her feet, she felt the room sway less and less until it finally stilled. Everything fell silent.

A minute passed. Two. She looked in every direction but saw only darkness; she felt along the walls again, searching for a way out. But there was nothing, only the cool metal. She groaned in frustration; her echo amplified through the air, like the haunted moan of death. It faded, and silence returned. She pounded on the walls with her fists.

Nothing.

She backed into the corner once again, folded her arms and shivered, and the fear returned. She felt a worrying shudder in her chest, as if her heart wanted to escape, to flee her body.

A loud clank rang out above her and she sucked in a startled breath as she looked up. A straight line of light appeared across the ceiling of the room, and she watched as it expanded. A heavy grating sound revealed double sliding doors being forced open. After so long in darkness, the light stabbed her eyes; she looked away, covering her face with both hands.

She heard noises above—voices—and fear squeezed her chest.

"It's a girl."

 _"A girl?_ "

 _"_ No way."

"I got dibs!"

"What's she look like?"

"How old is she?"

"Let me see, shank"

"You're the shank, klunk-face."

"About time we got one."

"Been a while."

"Dude, it smells like feet down there!"

"Hope you enjoyed the one-way trip, Greenie."

"Ain't no ticket back, babe."

She was hit with a wave of confusion, blistered with panic. The voices were odd, tinged with echo; some of the words were completely foreign—others felt familiar. She willed her eyes to adjust as she squinted toward the light and those speaking. At first she could see only shifting shadows, but they soon turned into the shapes of bodies—people bending over the hole in the ceiling, looking down at her, eyes wide.

And then, as if the lens of a camera had sharpened its focus, the faces cleared. They were boys, all of them—some young, some older. She didn't know what she'd expected, but seeing those faces puzzled her. They were just teenagers. Kids. Some of her fear melted away, but not enough to calm her racing heart.

Someone lowered a rope from above, the end of it tied into a big loop. She hesitated, then stepped into it with her right foot and clutched the rope as she was yanked toward the sky. Hands reached down, lots of hands, grabbing her by her clothes and arms and hands, pulling her up. The world seemed to spin, a swirling mist of faces and color and light. A storm of emotions wrenched her gut, twisted and pulled; she wanted to scream, cry, throw up. The chorus of voices had grown silent, but someone spoke as they lifted her over the sharp edge of the dark box. And she knew she'd never forget the words.

"Nice to meet ya, Greenie," the boy said. "Welcome to the Glade."


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N: I own nothing from the Maze Runner Trilogy. All rights to James Daschner and the writers of the Maze Runner movie. The idea of the story is to replace a male protagonist with a female protagonist and see where that takes the plotline of the story, so much of the content written by Daschner, meaning actual paragraphs and sentences, are the same. I give all credit to Daschner for the words he's written. I've made the obvious alterations (changing 'he' and 'him' to 'she' and 'her', etc.) but it's truly an A/U story, so I've put my own spin on much of it._

Chapter Two

The helping hands didn't stop swarming around her until she stood up straight and had the dust brushed from her shirt and pants. Still dazzled by the light, she staggered a bit. She was consumed with curiosity but still felt too ill to look closely at her surroundings. Her new companions said nothing as she swiveled her head around, trying to take it all in.

As she rotated in a slow circle, the other kids smirked and stared; someone reached out and poked her with a finger, as if they'd never seen a girl before. She slapped his hand away, and several people snorted with laughter. There had to be at least fifty of them, their clothes smudged and sweaty as if they'd been hard at work, all shapes and sizes and races, their hair of varying lengths. She suddenly felt dizzy, her eyes flickering between the boys and the bizarre place in which she'd found herself.

"Who said Clint had first shot at her?" Someone yelled from the crowd. There were several barks of laughter. "I'm next!"

Her chest heaved as she whipped around, pupils contracting and retracting. A dark-skinned boy—the same one who welcomed her—narrowed his eyes; his mouth pulled into a tight grin that didn't look like it had anything to do with humor.

"If _anybody_ touches this girl," the boy said, "you're gonna spend the night sleepin' with the Grievers in the Maze. Banished. No question." He paused, turning in a slow circle as if he wanted every person to see his face. "Ain't nobody better touch her! Nobody!"

In some distant region of her brain, she knew she should be comforted by this—the tone of protection and authority the boy had. But she wasn't. She felt sick. And then she was running. She burst through the wall of boys surrounding her, shouldering them aside. Her feet pounded the dusty ground, sending up clouds of dirt as her toes caught on tufts of grass.

"We've got a runner!" She heard a voice laugh behind her, with several echoing cackles. Her breath ripped at her throat, she was running blindly, not paying attention to where she was running or how far. She hit the ground before she made it more than a hundred yards, her legs pumping faster than her feet could carry her. She rolled from her back to her knees, clumps of dirt and blades of grass falling from her long, wild brown hair as she did so. Then her breath caught in her throat as her brain struggled to make sense of what she was seeing.

She was on her hands and knees in a vast courtyard several times the size of a football field, surrounded by four enormous walls made of gray stone and covered in spots with thick ivy. The walls had to be hundreds of feet high and formed a perfect square around them, each side split in the exact middle by an opening as tall as the walls themselves that, from what she could see, led to passages and long corridors beyond.

"Look at the Greenbean," a scratchy voice said; she couldn't see who it came from. "Gonna break her neck checkin' out the new digs." Several boys laughed.

"Shut your hole, Gally," a deeper voice responded. She focused back in on the dozens of strangers who had reformed the circle around her. She knew she must look out of it—she felt like she'd been drugged. A tall kid with blond hair and a sharp jaw studied her, his face full of emotion she couldn't quite place. A short, pudgy boy fidgeted back and forth on his feet, looking down at her with wide eyes. A thick, heavily muscled Asian kid folded his arms as he watched her, his tight shirtsleeves rolled up to show off his biceps. The dark-skinned boy frowned and countless others stared.

"Which Keeper she gonna get?" someone shouted from the back of the crowd.

"I told ya, shuck-face," a shrill voice responded. "She's a girl, so she'll be with Frypan in the kitchen—no doubt about it." The kid giggled like he'd just said the funniest thing in history.

She once again felt a pressing ache of confusion—hearing so many words and phrases that didn't make sense. _Shuck. Keeper. Frypan._ They popped out of the boys' mouths so naturally it seemed odd for her not to understand. It was as if her memory loss had stolen a chunk of her language—it was disorienting.

Different emotions battled for dominance in her mind and heart. Confusion. Curiosity. Panic. Fear. But laced through it all was the dark feeling of utter hopelessness, like the world had ended for her, had been wiped from her memory and replaced with something awful. She wanted to run and hide from these people.

The scratchy-voiced boy was talking. "—even do that much, bet my liver on it." She still couldn't see his face.

"I said shut your holes!" the dark boy yelled. "Keep yapping and next break'll be cut in half!"

 _That must be their leader_ , she realized. Hating how everyone gawked at her, she concentrated on studying the place the boy had called the Glade. The floor of the courtyard looked like it was made of huge stone blocks, many of them cracked and filled with long grasses and weeds. An odd, dilapidated wooden building near one of the corners of the square contrasted greatly with the gray stone. A few trees surrounded it, their roots like gnarled hands digging into the rock floor for food. Another corner of the compound held gardens—from where she was she recognized corn, tomato plants, fruit trees.

Across the courtyard from there stood wooden pens holding sheep and pigs and cows. A large grove of trees filled the final corner; the closest ones looked crippled and close to dying. The sky overhead was cloudless and blue, but she could see no sign of the sun despite the brightness of the day. The creeping shadows of the walls didn't reveal the time or direction—it could be early morning or late afternoon. As she breathed in deeply, trying to settle her nerves, a mixture of smells bombarded her. Freshly turned dirt, manure, pine, something rotten and something sweet. Somehow she knew that these were the smells of a farm.

"Where am I?" She whispered, surprised at hearing her voice for the first time in her salvageable memory. It didn't sound quite right—clearer than she would've imagined.

"Nowhere good." This came from the dark-skinned boy. "Just slim yourself nice and calm."

Then, she passed out.


	3. Chapter 3

_A/N: I own nothing from the Maze Runner Trilogy. All rights to James Daschner and the writers of the Maze Runner movie. The idea of the story is to replace a male protagonist with a female protagonist and see where that takes the plotline of the story, so much of the content written by Daschner, meaning actual paragraphs and sentences, are the same. I give all credit to Daschner for the words he's written. I've made the obvious alterations (changing 'he' and 'him' to 'she' and 'her', etc.) but it's truly an A/U story, so I've put my own spin on much of it._

 _This chapter is told in Minho's perspective. I really loved the scene in TMR movie where Teresa woke up and started hurling rocks at the Gladers, and there was no way that Marisa wasn't going to be just as badass. Dialogue is mostly taken from the movie, so credit to the writers of the film._

Chapter Three

Minho heaved a heavy sigh, but kept his expression closed off. He hated this part, the one where he had to kill some poor shank's hope, squashing it like a bug. It was always great to get a new Runner, but introducing him to the realities of the Maze was a buzzkill that came with the territory. Gabriel, the newest Runner, looked like he'd just klunked his pants.

"So you're saying that after all this time, there's no—"

He broke off, head snapping towards the still-open heavy iron door of the little cement hut, where Minho was already looking. Gabriel's ears weren't as sharp as Minho's, but that was to be expected. Minho had been combing the Maze longer than most of the boys had been Gladers, and his senses were pretty much impeccable.

"What is it?" Gabriel asked, but he had his answer before he finished speaking. Two boys, some of the younger ones, were thudding towards them, puffing breathlessly. They skidded to a stop against the frame of the hut, panting.

"Hey!" Minho said angrily. "What are you guys doing? You're not allowed in here."

He didn't need to say this. Everyone knew that the Runner's hut was off-limits, for the very reason that Minho hated getting new Runners—to protect the secret. The other posts were open to anyone, but the Runner's hut was off-limits to everyone except for the Runners themselves. And Alby, of course.

"Sorry," Huffed Braeden, a thin black kid with wide brown eyes. "It's just the...uh—"

"It's the girl." Cut in Clyde, a stocky boy with a mop of curly brown hair.

"What, is she awake?" Gabriel asked, trying to keep the curiosity in his voice mild. He'd never seen a girl in his memory, but he knew that the box occasionally brought one up and according to everyone who _had_ seen one, this girl was seriously good-looking.

"You could say that." Braeden said, and without another word, they were crashing back through the trees towards the green. Minho and Gabriel exchanged a look, and darted out after them.

Despite the younger boys' head-start, Gabriel and Minho had passed them before they even emerged from the trees—they weren't Runners for nothing. But instead of heading towards the sick house where the Medjacks had carried the girl to when she fainted, the younger boys were sprinting off to the tower. Without asking, Minho and Gabriel changed their direction to the tower as well, where a large crowd had gathered beneath it for no obvious reason.

Minho pulled up short beside Chuck—who had been the most recent arrival until now.

"Chuck, what's going on?" Gabriel asked apprehensively. But there was no need for the worried tone; Chuck was laughing, his hands on his hips as he doubled over. Taking a breath, he lifted a pudgy hand and pointed towards the tower, chuckling, "Girls are awesome."

Collectively the two Runners turned, zeroing in on what was happening. About three dozen Gladers were gathered at the tower's base, which was already weird because it broke protocol. But it kept getting weirder the longer they looked. Most of the boys were covering their heads with something—a brass tub, a plank of wood, a wicker basket—and they were shouting hoarsely as small objects were catapulted over the side of the tower towards them.

"Are those _rocks_?" Minho asked, bewildered.

"She was throwing fruit at first, but I guess she ran out." Chuck was still laughing.

Minho put it together at the same time as another voice rang out, much clearer and higher than the ones he was used to hearing, "Leave me _alone_!"

He shook his head and started over at a trot, in no hurry to get pelted with a stone from the Greenie. As he neared the tower, he heard Gally's scratchy voice bark, "HEY! Throw one more of those things, I'm—OW!"

Minho pressed his lips together, suppressing a smile. As far as Glader's go, Gally was his least favorite, always aggressive and bullying and condescending. It was a nice present to see him get clonked on the head once in a while.

"Go _away_!" The girl yelled down at them, lobbing another few rocks over the side as the boys kept yelling.

"We come in peace!" Frypan hollered, ducking a gray rock the size of a first.

"What happened?" Gabriel asked amid a few cries of "Duck!" as more rocks rained down on them.

"Well I don't think she likes us very much," said Newt, his voice quivering with laughter as he dodged a stone, which bounced off the plank of wood Winston held over his head with a _thud_.

"What do you want from me?" The girl screamed, tossing down several medium-sized pebbles, which clanged against tubs and pots over the yells of surprise and Jeff's frantic, "Take cover, y'all!"

"We just wanna talk!" Winston called up. A few more rocks. A chorus of "OHHH"s.

"Woah, woah, woah, HEY!" Newt screamed, stepping out from under the plank of wood. "We're not going to hurt you, we just want to talk. I promise." There was a pause, then an eighth of a face edged towards the side of the tower top.

"I promise." Newt said softly. "We're not going to hurt you." The girl leaned forward a little more, so a fourth of her face was visible, but she still didn't speak. '

"Can I come up? Just me?" Newt asked gently. The girl didn't respond, but disappeared back into the unseen tower top. Newt took a breath and a step forward. "Alright, I'm coming up." He said calmly. The Gladers watched his slow progress as he began to ascend the rickety ladder to the tower top. In seconds, he was out of sight.


	4. Chapter 4

_Disclaimer: I own nothing from the Maze Runner Trilogy. All rights to James Daschner and the writers of the Maze Runner movie. The idea of the story is to replace a male protagonist with a female protagonist and see where that takes the plotline of the story, so much of the content written by Daschner, meaning actual paragraphs and sentences, are the same. I give all credit to Daschner for the words he's written. I've made the obvious alterations (changing 'he' and 'him' to 'she' and 'her', etc.) but it's truly an A/U story, so I've put my own spin on much of it._

Chapter Four

She gripped the rough wooden handle of the knife in her hand so hard her knuckles turned white. She had pressed herself against the corner of the deck, her knees drawn to her chest and the knife pointed towards the opening in the floor to the ladder below.

After a series of creaks, the top third of the boy emerged through the hole. His eyes widened as he saw the knife, and he raised a hand.

"Woah, it's okay." He said, his voice deep and husky, his accent clipped in a way that suggested some sort of English background. He had blonde hair with dark streaks, an angular face, and golden brown eyes.

He slowly pulled the rest of his body through the hole with one arm, the other still held towards her in a way that was both defensive and placating.

"Where am I?" She demanded. "What is this place? Why can't I remember anything?"

"Listen this is all normal." The boy said softly. "Okay? We've all been there. And your name, that'll come back to you in a few days, it's the one thing they let us keep." The boy paused for a moment, studying her, gauging her reaction to his words. "I'm Newt."

She watched, chest heaving, as Newt slowly inched towards her, raising a tentative hand. "Let me just take this, okay?" Newt asked. She didn't answer, but loosened her grip enough for Newt to slide the knife from her hand. "Okay," He breathed a sigh of relief, giving her a shaky smile.

"What's going on up there?" The same scratchy voice called up. Newt stood and crossed over to the wooden railing, looking over.

"Is she coming down?" Another voice asked.

Newt glanced back at her. "How about it?" He asked, raising his eyebrows questioningly. "We won't bite."

He held out a hand, and when she took it, broke out in a smile. She followed Newt down the ladder, taking deep, steadying breaths. As she neared the ground, a boy said, "Watch her on the bottom step," and another, "Shuck it, she's _tiny_."

When her feet hit the last rung, she felt two warm hands enclose around her waist and she made a noise of indignation in the back of her throat. Before she could strike out, however, she had been resettled on the ground level of the tower and Newt, who had been the one to grab her, had taken a safe amount of steps back.

The crowd of boys who had once been gathered around the tower had barely diminished—now Newt, the black boy, and two dozen or so others stood before her, looking at her with expressions that varied from amusement to curiosity to defensiveness.

She looked back at her captors, feeling desperate to ask questions. _Captors_ , she thought. Then, _Why did that word pop into my head?_ She scanned their faces, taking in each expression, judging them. One boy's eyes, flared with something cold, stopped her dead. He looked so calculating. He had strawberry blonde hair, and when they made eye contact, the boy shook his head and turned away, walking toward a greasy iron pole with a wooden bench next to it. A multicolored flag hung limply at the top of the pole, no wind to reveal its pattern.

Shaken, she stared at the boy's back until he turned and took a seat. She quickly looked away.

Suddenly the leader of the group—perhaps he was seventeen—took a step forward. He wore normal clothes: black T-shirt, jeans, tennis shoes, a digital watch. For some reason the clothing here surprised her; it seemed like everyone should be wearing something more menacing—like prison garb. The dark-skinned boy had short-cropped hair, his face clean shaven. But other than the permanent scowl, there was nothing scary about him at all.

"It's a long story, Greenie," the boy said. "Piece by piece, you'll learn—I'll be takin' you on the Tour tomorrow. Till then…just don't break anything." He held a hand out. "Name's Alby." He waited, clearly wanting to shake hands.

She refused. Some instinct took over her actions and without saying anything she turned away from Alby and walked to a nearby tree, where she plopped down to sit with her back against the rough bark. Panic swelled inside her once again, almost too much to bear. But she took a deep breath and forced herself to try to accept the situation. _Just go with it_ , she thought. _You won't figure out anything if you give in to fear_.

"Then tell me," she called out, struggling to keep her voice even. "Tell me the long story."

Alby glanced at the friends closest to him, rolling his eyes, and she studied the crowd again. They were all boys, ranging from boys in their midteens to young adults like Alby, who seemed to be one of the oldest. At that moment, she realized with a sickening lurch that she had no idea how old she was. Her heart sank at the thought—she was so lost she didn't even know her own age.

"Seriously," she said, giving up on the show of courage. "Where am I?"

Alby walked over to her and sat down cross-legged; the crowd of boys followed and packed in behind. Heads popped up here and there, kids leaning in every direction to get a better look.

"If you ain't scared," Alby said, "you ain't human. Act any different and I'd throw you off the Cliff because it'd mean you're a psycho."

"The Cliff?" She asked, blood draining from her face.

"Shuck it," Alby said, rubbing his eyes. "Ain't no way to start these conversations, you get me? We don't kill shanks like you here, I promise. Just try and avoid being killed, survive, whatever."

He paused, and she realized her face must've whitened even more when she heard that last part.

"Man," Alby said, then ran his hands over his short hair as he let out a long sigh. "I ain't good at this—you're the first Greenbean since Nick was killed."

Her eyes widened, and Newt stepped up and playfully slapped Alby across the head. "Wait for the bloody Tour, Alby," he said, eyes flashing towards her. "She's gonna have a buggin' heart attack, nothin' even been heard yet." He bent down and grasped her hands, veins standing out on his muscled arms as he lifted her easily to her feet. "Just take a breath and relax, Greenie, and we'd all be right cheery if ya'd forgive our klunk-for-brains new leader, here."

"Pipe it, shuck-face," Alby grunted, pulling Newt back to stand next to him. "At least she can understand half my words." There were a few scattered laughs, and then everyone gathered behind Alby and Newt, packing in even tighter, waiting to hear what they said.

She reached out and shook the Alby's hand—he seemed a lot nicer now that Newt was here introducing him. She was just realizing how small she was compared to all the other boys here. Everyone was nearly a head taller than her, and Newt was tallest of all, despite looking to be a year or so younger than Alby.

Alby spread his arms out, palms up. "This place is called the Glade, all right? It's where we live, where we eat, where we sleep—we call ourselves the Gladers. That's all you—"

"Who sent me here?" She asked, fear finally giving way to anger. "How'd—" But Alby's hand shot out before she could finish, grabbing her by the shirt as he tugged her forward. She knocked his hand off, backing against the tree, trying to get away from Alby, who stayed right in her face.

"No interruptions, shank!" Alby shouted. "Whacker, if we told you everything, you'd die on the spot, right after you klunked your pants. Baggers'd drag you off, and you ain't no good to us then, are ya?"

"I don't even know what you're talking about," She said slowly, shocked at how steady her voice sounded.

Newt reached out and grabbed Alby by the shoulders. "Alby, lay off a bit. You're hurtin' more than helpin', ya know?"

Alby stepped back, his chest heaving with breaths. "Ain't got time to be nice, Greenbean. Old life's over, new life's begun. Learn the rules quick, listen, don't talk. You get me?"

She found herself looking over at Newt, hoping for help. Everything inside her churned and hurt; the tears that had yet to come burned her eyes. Newt locked eyes with her and nodded. "Greenie, you get him, right?" He nodded again.

She fumed, wanted to punch somebody. But she simply said, "Yeah."

"Good that," Alby said. He grinned at her. "First Day. That's what today is for you, Greenie. Night's comin', Runners'll be back soon. The Box came late today, and after your little episode, I ain't got time for the Tour. Besides, we got somethin' special planned for tonight." He glanced back over his shoulder, where she looked and saw a large pile of wood piled high like a bonfire. A stick at the top held a skull that looked like it had belonged to a sheep or a goat. She looked back at Alby. "Tomorrow morning, right after the wake-up," He said, then turned toward Newt. "Get her a bed, get her to rest some. And watch her, don't let her run off again."

"Good that," Newt said.

Alby's eyes returned to her. "A few weeks, you'll be happy, Greenbean. You'll be happy and helpin'. None of us knew jack on First Day, you neither. New life begins tomorrow."

Alby turned and pushed his way through the crowd, then headed for the slanted wooden building in the corner. Most of the kids wandered away then, each one giving her a lingering look before they walked off.

She folded her arms, closed her eyes, took a deep breath. Emptiness ate away at her insides, quickly replaced by a sadness that hurt her heart. It was all too much—where was she? What was this place? Was it some kind of prison? If so, why had she been sent here, and for how long? Why was she the only girl? The language was odd, and none of the boys seemed to care whether she lived or died. Tears threatened again to fill her eyes, but she refused to let them come.

"What did I do?" she whispered, not really meaning for anyone to hear her. "What did I do—why'd they send me here?"

Newt stepped towards her, easing his fingers around her wrists and pulling her arms away from her chest. "Greenie, what you're feelin', we've all felt it. We've all had First Day, come out of that dark box. Things are bad, they are, and they'll get much worse for ya soon, that's the truth. But down the road a piece, you'll be fightin' true and good. I can tell you're not a bloody sissy."

"Is this a prison?" She asked; she dug in the darkness of her thoughts, trying to find a crack to her past.

"Done asked four questions, haven't ya?" Newt replied, smirking. "No good answers for ya, not yet, anyway. Best be quiet now, accept the change—morn comes tomorrow."

She said nothing, her head sunk, eyes staring at the cracked, rocky ground. A line of small-leafed weeds ran along the edge of one of the stone blocks, tiny yellow flowers peeping through as if searching for the sun, long disappeared behind the enormous walls of the Glade.

"Chuck'll be a good fit for ya," Newt said. "Wee little fat shank, but nice sap when all's said and done. Stay here, I'll be back."

Newt had barely finished his sentence when a sudden, piercing scream ripped through the air. High and shrill, the barely human shriek echoed across the stone courtyard; every kid in sight turned to look toward the source. She felt her blood turn to icy slush as she realized that the horrible sound came from the wooden building she had run from not too long ago.

Even Newt had jumped as if startled, his forehead creasing in concern.

"Shuck it," he said. "Can't the bloody Med-jacks handle that boy for ten minutes without needin' my help?" He shook his head and lightly pressed his hand on the small of her back, pushing her forward. "Find Chuckie, tell him he's in charge of your sleepin' arrangements."

"Wait," she said, grabbing at his arm. "Where are you going?"

She hadn't meant to sound as if he needed him, she felt a stirring in the back of her mind as if she was supposed to be avoiding that kind of behavior. Newt grinned, his eyes never leaving her face. And then he turned and headed in the direction of the building, running.

She slid down the rough face of the tree until she sat on the ground again; she shrank back against the bark and closed her eyes, wishing she could wake up from this terrible, terrible dream.

 _A/N: Woah wait wtf people are actually reading this story? That's so neat. Anyways, I've literally finished rewriting the entire TMR trilogy, but I'm obviously not going to post the whole thing at once. I also might start combining the chapters. The next one is gonna be really cool; like I said, I loved the movie, so I'm actually writing in the entire bonfire party scene._


	5. Chapter 5

_Disclaimer: I own nothing from the Maze Runner Trilogy. All rights to James Daschner and the writers of the Maze Runner movie. The idea of the story is to replace a male protagonist with a female protagonist and see where that takes the plotline of the story, so much of the content written by Daschner, meaning actual paragraphs and sentences, are the same. I give all credit to Daschner for the words he's written. I've made the obvious alterations (changing 'he' and 'him' to 'she' and 'her', etc.) but it's truly an A/U story, so I've put my own spin on much of it._ She sat there for several moments, too overwhelmed to move. She finally forced herself to look over at the haggard building. A group of boys milled around outside, glancing anxiously at the upper windows as if expecting a hideous beast to leap out in an explosion of glass and wood.

A metallic clicking sound from the branches above grabbed her attention, made her look up; a flash of silver and red light caught her eyes just before disappearing around the trunk to the other side. She scrambled to her feet and walked around the tree, craning her neck for a sign of whatever she'd heard, but she saw only bare branches, gray and brown, forking out like skeleton fingers—and looking just as alive.

"That was one of them beetle blades," someone said.

She turned to her right to see a kid standing nearby, short and pudgy, staring at her. He was young—probably the youngest of any in the group she'd seen so far, maybe twelve or thirteen years old. His brown hair hung down over his ears and neck, scraping the tops of his shoulders. Green eyes shone through an otherwise pitiful face, flabby and flushed.

She nodded at him. "A beetle what?"

"Beetle blade," the boy said, pointing to the top of the tree. "Won't hurt ya unless you're stupid enough to touch one of them." He paused. "Shank." He didn't sound comfortable saying the last word, as if he hadn't quite grasped the slang of the Glade.

Another scream, this one long and nerve-grinding, tore through the air and her heart lurched. The fear was like icy dew on her skin.

"What's going on over there?" she asked, pointing at the building.

"Don't know," the chubby boy replied; his voice still carried the high pitch of childhood. "Ben's in there, sicker than a dog. _They_ got him."

"They?" Marisa didn't like the malicious way the boy had said the word.

"Yeah."

"Who are _They_?"

"Better hope you never find out," the kid answered, looking far too comfortable for the situation. He held out his hand. "My name's Chuck. I was the Greenbean until you showed up."

 _This is my guide for the night?_ Marisa thought. She couldn't shake her extreme discomfort, and now annoyance crept in as well. Nothing made sense; her head hurt.

"Why is everyone calling me Greenbean?" she asked, shaking Chuck's hand quickly, then letting go.

"Any clue what else we should call ya?" He asked. She opened her mouth, but when no sound came out, he shook his head and laughed. Another scream came from the house, a sound like a starving animal being tortured.

"How can you be laughing?" She asked, horrified by the noise. "It sounds like someone's dying in there."

"He'll be okay. No one dies if they make it back in time to get the Serum. It's all or nothing. Dead or not dead. Just hurts a lot."

This gave her a pause. "What hurts a lot?"

Chuck's eyes wandered as if he wasn't sure what to say. "Um, gettin' stung by the Grievers."

"Grievers?" She was only getting more and more confused. _Stung. Grievers_. The words had a heavy weight of dread to them, and she suddenly wasn't so sure she wanted to know what Chuck was talking about.

Chuck shrugged, then looked away, eyes rolling.

She sighed in frustration and leaned back against the tree. "Looks like you barely know more than I do," she said, but she knew it wasn't true. Her memory loss was strange. She mostly remembered the workings of the world—but emptied of specifics, faces, names. Like a book completely intact but missing one word in every dozen, making it a miserable and confusing read. She didn't even know her name. Or her age.

"Chuck, how…old do you think I am?"

The boy scanned her up and down, blushing scarlet. "I'd say you're sixteen. And in case you were wondering, five feet tall…ninety-something pounds, brown hair, blue eyes..."

She suddenly grinned mischievously. "Am I pretty, Chuck?" She asked teasingly.

"Oh!" Chuck turned, if possible, even redder. "Um, uh, ye—"

"Aw it's okay, ugly as fried liver on a stick, huh?" She giggled, and then even harder at Chuck's stunned expression.

Her laughter ebbed away slowly as she began to think about what she just heard. Sixteen? She was _sixteen_? She felt much older than that.

"Are you sure?" She paused, searching for words. "How…" She didn't even know what to ask.

"Don't worry. You'll be all whacked for a few days, but then you'll get used to this place. I have. We live here, this is it. Better than living in a pile of klunk." He squinted, maybe anticipating her question. "Klunk's another word for poo. Poo makes a klunk sound when it falls in our pee pots."

She looked at Chuck, unable to believe she was having this conversation. "That's nice" was all she could manage. She stood up and walked past Chuck toward the old building she'd run out of; shack was a better word for the place. It looked three or four stories high and about to fall down at any minute—a crazy assortment of logs and boards and thick twine and windows seemingly thrown together at random, the massive, ivy-strewn stone walls rising up behind it. As she moved across the courtyard, the distinct smell of firewood and some kind of meat cooking made her stomach grumble. Knowing now that it was just a sick kid doing the screaming made her feel better. Until she thought about what had caused it…

"You gotta stop worrying, Greenie. I can see it in your face," Chuck was saying. "Your name will come back, you can look forward to that. Takes a couple days, is all. Other than that, just get nice and comfy here. We're all used to not remembering by now."

She nodded, barely listening. If Chuck was right, she'd just discovered a link to the rest of the boys. A common pattern to their memory losses. They all remembered their names. Why not their parents' names? Why not a friend's name? Why not their _last_ names?

"Don't you worry," he said. "I'll take care of you. I've been here a whole month, and I know the place inside and out. You can count on Chuck, okay?"

She had almost reached the front door of the shack and the small group of boys congregating there when she was hit by a sudden and surprise rush of anger. She turned to face Chuck. "You can't even _tell_ me anything. I wouldn't call that taking care of me." She turned back toward the door, intent on going inside to find some answers. Where this sudden courage and resolve came from, she had no idea.

Chuck shrugged. "Nothin' I say'll do you any good," he said. "I'm basically still a Newbie, too. But I can be your friend—"

"I don't need friends," She interrupted. She'd reached the door, an ugly slab of sun-faded wood, and she pulled it open to see several stoic-faced boys standing at the foot of a crooked staircase, the steps and railings twisted and angled in all directions. Dark wallpaper covered the walls of the foyer and hallway, half of it peeling off. The only decorations in sight were a dusty vase on a three-legged table and a black-and-white picture of an ancient woman dressed in an old-fashioned white dress. It reminded her of a haunted house from a movie or something. There were even planks of wood missing from the floor.

The place reeked of dust and mildew—a big contrast to the pleasant smells outside. Flickering fluorescent lights shone from the ceiling. She hadn't thought of it yet, but she had to wonder where the electricity came from in a place like the Glade. She stared at the old woman in the picture. Had she lived here once? Taken care of these people?

"Hey, look, it's the Greenbean," one of the older boys called out. With a start, she realized it was the guy with the strawberry blonde hair who'd given her the look of death earlier. He looked like he was sixteen or so, long legs and sculpted arms. His nose was long and straight, and he had elfish-looking, upturned eyebrows. "This shank probably klunked her pants when she heard old Benny baby scream like a girl. Need a new diaper, shuck-face?"

"Don't call me that." She had to get away from this guy. Without another word, she made for the stairs, only because they were close, only because she had no idea what to do or say. But the kid stepped in front of her, holding a hand up.

"Hold on there, Greenie." He jerked a thumb in the direction of the upper floor. "Newbies aren't allowed to see someone who's been… _taken_. Newt and Alby won't allow it."

"What's your problem?" She asked, trying to keep the fear out of her voice, trying not to think what the kid had meant by _taken_.

"Listen to me, Greenbean." The boy wrinkled up his face, folded his arms. "I've seen you before. Something's fishy about you showing up here, and I'm gonna find out what."

A surge of heat pulsed through her veins. "I've never seen you before in my life. I have no idea who you are, and I couldn't care less," she snarled. But really, how would she know? And how could this kid remember _her_?

The boy snickered, a short burst of laughter mixed with a phlegm-filled snort. Then his face grew serious, his eyebrows slanting inward. "I've… _seen_ you, shank. Not too many in these parts can say they've been stung." He pointed up the stairs. "I have. I know what old Benny baby's going through. I've been there. And I saw _you_ during the Changing."

He reached out and poked her in the chest, smirking in a way that made her shiver. A couple of the guys who had been sitting down when she first walked in leapt to their feet.

"Woah, man."

"Gally, c'mon."

"You can't touch her."

"You heard what Alby said, dude."

"I saw her!" The kid—Gally, she remembered a boy say—shouted. Then he turned back to her. "And I bet your first meal from Frypan that Benny'll say he's seen ya, too."

She refused to break eye contact but decided to say nothing. Panic ate at her once again. Would things ever stop getting worse?

"Griever got ya wettin' yourself?" the boy said through a sneer. "A little scared now? Don't wanna get _stung_ , do ya?"

There was that word again. _Stung_. She tried not to think about it and pointed up the stairs, from where the moans of the sick kid echoed through the building. "If Newt went up there, then I wanna talk to him."

The boy said nothing, stared at her for several seconds. Then he shook his head. "You know what? You're right, Greenbean—I shouldn't be so mean to Newbies. Go on upstairs and I'm sure Alby and Newt'll fill you in. Seriously, go on. I'm sorry."

He lightly pushed her shoulder, then stepped back, gesturing up the stairs. But she knew the kid was up to something. Losing parts of your memory didn't make you an idiot.

"What's your name?" She asked, stalling for time while she tried to decide if she should go up after all.

"Gally. And don't let anyone fool you. I'm the _real_ leader here, not the two geezer shanks upstairs. Me. You can call me Captain Gally if you want." He smiled for the first time, but it wasn't friendly.

"I _don't_ 'want'," she said, so sick of the guy she wanted to scream, punch him in the face. "But okay, Captain Gally it is." She exaggerated a salute, feeling a rush of adrenaline, as she knew she'd just crossed a line.

A few snickers escaped the crowd, and Gally looked around, his face bright red. He peered back down at her, hatred furrowing his brow and crinkling his monstrous nose.

"Just go up the stairs," Gally said. "And stay away from me, you little slinthead." He pointed up again but didn't take his eyes off her.

"Fine." Marisa looked around one more time, confused, angry. She felt the heat of blood in her face. No one made a move to stop her from doing as Gally asked, except for Chuck, who stood at the front door, shaking his head.

"You're not supposed to," the younger boy said. "You're a Newbie—you can't go up there."

"Go," said Gally with a sneer. "Go on up."

She regretted having come inside in the first place—but she _did_ want to talk to Newt. She felt comfortable for the first time, or as close as she could come to comfort in a place like this, when he talked to her. So she started up the stairs.

Each step groaned and creaked under her weight; she might've stopped for fear of falling through the old wood if she weren't leaving such an awkward situation below. Up she went, wincing at every splintered sound. The stairs reached a landing, turned left, then came upon a railed hallway leading to several rooms. Only one door had a light coming through the crack at the bottom.

"The Changing!" Gally shouted from below. "Look forward to it, shuck-face!"

As if the taunting gave her a sudden burst of courage, she walked over to the lit door, ignoring the creaking floorboards and laughter downstairs—ignoring the onslaught of words she didn't understand, suppressing the dreadful feelings they induced. She reached down, turned the brass handle, and opened the door.

Inside the room, Newt and Alby crouched over someone lying on a bed.

She leaned in closer to see what the fuss was all about, but when she got a clear look at the condition of the patient, her heart went cold. She had to fight the bile that surged up her throat.

The look was fast—only a few seconds—but it was enough to haunt her forever. A twisted, pale figure writhing in agony, chest bare and hideous. Tight, rigid cords of sickly green veins webbed across the boy's body and limbs, like ropes under his skin. Purplish bruises covered the kid, red hives, bloody scratches. His bloodshot eyes bulged, darting back and forth. The image had already burned into her mind before Alby jumped up, blocking the view but not the moans and screams, pushing her out of the room, then slamming the door shut behind them.

"What're you doing up here, Greenie!" Alby yelled, his lips taut with anger, eyes on fire.

Marisa felt weak, but she shook her head. "I want some answers," she murmured, but she couldn't put any strength in her words—felt herself give up inside. What was wrong with that kid? She slouched against the railing in the hallway and stared at the floor, not sure what to do next.

"Get your runtcheeks down those stairs, right now," Alby ordered. "Chuck'll help you. If I see you again before tonight, you ain't reachin' tomorrow alive. I'll throw you off the Cliff myself, you get me?"

She clenched her jaw, angry and scared. She felt like she could be vaporizing Alby with her stare at this very moment. Without saying a word, she pushed past Alby and headed down the creaky steps, going as fast as she dared. Ignoring the gaping stares of everyone at the bottom—especially Gally—she walked out the door, pulling Chuck by the arm as she did so.

She hated these people. She hated all of them. Except Chuck. "Get me away from these guys," she said. She realized that Chuck might actually be her only friend in the world.

"You got it," Chuck replied, his voice chipper, as if thrilled to be needed. "But first we should get you some food from Frypan."

"I don't know if I can ever eat again." Not after what she'd just seen.

Chuck nodded. "Yeah, you will. I'll meet you at the same tree as before. Ten minutes."

She was more than happy to get away from the house, and headed back toward the tree. She'd only known what it was like to be alive here for a short while and she already wanted it to end. She wished for all the world she could remember something about her previous life. Anything. Her mom, her dad, a friend, her school, a hobby. A boy.

She blinked hard several times, trying to get the image of what she'd just seen in the shack out of her mind.

 _The Changing_. Gally had called it the Changing.

It wasn't cold, but she shuddered once again.

 _A/N: I'm still going to post the part chapter today, but I decided to go ahead and include the part where Marisa meets Chuck. I love Chuck. We all love Chuck. Chuck deserves his own chapter._


	6. Chapter 6

_Disclaimer: I own nothing from the Maze Runner Trilogy. All rights to James Daschner and the writers of the Maze Runner movie. The idea of the story is to replace a male protagonist with a female protagonist and see where that takes the plotline of the story, so much of the content written by Daschner, meaning actual paragraphs and sentences, are the same. I give all credit to Daschner for the words he's written. I've made the obvious alterations (changing 'he' and 'him' to 'she' and 'her', etc.) but it's truly an A/U story, so I've put my own spin on much of it._

Chapter Six

She leaned against the tree as she waited for Chuck. She scanned the compound of the Glade, this new place of nightmares where she seemed destined to live. The shadows from the walls had lengthened considerably, already creeping up the sides of the ivy-covered stone faces on the other side.

At least this helped her know directions—the wooden building crouched in the northwest corner, wedged in a darkening patch of shadow, the grove of trees in the southwest. The farm area, where a few workers were still picking their way through the fields, spread across the entire northeast quarter of the Glade. The animals were in the southeast corner, mooing and crowing and baying.

In the exact middle of the courtyard, the still-gaping hole of the Box lay open, as if inviting her to jump back in and go home. Near that, maybe twenty feet to the south, stood a squat building made of rough concrete blocks, a menacing iron door its only entrance—there were no windows. A large round handle resembling a steel steering wheel marked the only way to open the door, just like something within a submarine. Despite what she'd just seen, she didn't know which she felt more strongly—curiosity to know what was inside, or dread at finding out.

She had just moved her attention to the four vast openings in the middle of the main walls of the Glade when Chuck arrived, a couple of sandwiches cradled in his arms, along with apples and two metal cups of water. The sense of relief that flooded through her surprised her—she wasn't _completely_ alone in this place.

"Frypan wasn't too happy about me invading his kitchen before suppertime," Chuck said, sitting down next to the tree, motioning to her to do the same. She did, grabbed the sandwich, but hesitated, the writhing, monstrous image of what she'd seen in the shack popping back into her mind. Soon, though, her hunger won out and she took a huge bite. The wonderful tastes of ham and cheese and mayonnaise filled her mouth.

"Oh, wow," she mumbled through a mouthful. "I was starving."

"Told ya." Chuck chomped into his own sandwich.

After another couple of bites, she finally asked the question that had been bothering her.

"What's actually _wrong_ with that Ben guy? He doesn't even look human anymore."

Chuck glanced over at the house. "Don't really know," he muttered absently. "I didn't see him."

She could tell the boy was being less than honest but decided not to press him. "Well, you don't want to see him, trust me." She continued to eat, munching on the apples as she studied the huge breaks in the walls. Though it was hard to make out from where she sat, there was something odd about the stone edges of the exits to the outside corridors. She felt an uncomfortable sense of vertigo looking at the towering walls, as if she hovered above them instead of sitting at their base.

"What's out there?" she asked, finally breaking the silence. "Is this part of a huge castle or something?"

Chuck hesitated. Looked uncomfortable. "Um, I've never been outside the Glade."

She paused. "You're hiding something," she finally replied, finishing off her last bite and taking a long swig of water. The frustration at getting no answers from anyone was starting to grind her nerves. It only made it worse to think that even if she _did_ get answers, she wouldn't know if she'd be getting the truth.

"Why are guys so secretive?"

"That's just the way it is. Things are really weird around here, and most of us don't know everything. _Half_ of everything."

It bothered her that Chuck didn't seem to care about what he'd just said. That he seemed indifferent to having his life taken away from him. What was wrong with these people? She got to her feet and started walking toward the eastern opening. "Well, no one said I couldn't look around." She needed to learn something or she was going to lose her mind.

"Whoa, wait!" Chuck cried, running to catch up. "Dude, where are you going?"

"I just wanna see," she said.

Chuck looked perplexed. "You can look around all you want, but you better not go out there."

"Why not, what's through there?" She asked, still walking determinedly toward the wall.

"I don't know," Chuck said stepping around in front of her. "I just know what I'm told. I'm not supposed to leave."

She stared at him for a moment, trying to decipher the look in Chuck's eyes, but he looked away towards the wall. She followed his gaze, and felt her heart skip a beat when a boy unexpectedly appeared around a corner up ahead, entering the main passage from one of the offshoots to the right, running toward her and the Glade. Covered in sweat, his face red, clothes sticking to his body, the boy didn't slow, hardly glancing at her as he went past. He headed straight for the squat concrete building near the edge of the woods.

She watched, curious, as he arrived at the big iron door of the small building; he turned the rusty wheel handle, grunting with the effort. Chuck had said something about Runners earlier. What had they been doing out there?

The big door finally popped open, and with a deafening squeal of metal against metal, the boy swung it wide. He disappeared inside, pulling it shut behind him with a loud clonk. She stared, her mind churning to come up with any possible explanation for what she'd just witnessed. Nothing developed, but something about that creepy old building gave her goose bumps, a disquieting chill.

"I thought no one was allowed to leave?" She said indignantly.

"I said _we're_ not allowed to leave." Chuck corrected her. "They're different, they're Runners. They know more about the Maze than anyone."

She paused. "Wait, what?"

Chuck's face paled. "What?"

"What? You just said Maze." She said.

"I-I did?" Chuck stuttered.

She stared at him again, now fully suspicious. "Yeah." She walked briskly past him, right up to the edge of the grass.

"Where are you going? What're you doing?" Chuck huffed, running again to catch up.

"I just want to take a look."

"You can't." Chuck said, exasperated. "No one leaves. Especially not now." He took a deep breath, casting a furtive glance over his shoulder to the opening in the wall. "It's not safe."

"Okay, alright," she relented. "I'm not gonna go in." She meant it, but that didn't stop her from taking a few more slow steps closer. Then, she saw a flash of movement to her right, and two strong hands making contact with her chest.

"Hey!" A familiar, scratchy voice shouted, shoving her backwards so hard that she launched into the air and hit the ground with a dull thud, the breath leaving her body.

She gasped for air, coughing as she looked up into Gally's face, which loomed above her. His expression was strange—a mix of annoyance and something else. Not quite concern, but slightly anxious, as if he hadn't meant to push her so hard.

"We gotta stop meeting like this, Greenie." He rasped.

She sat up angrily, lashing out towards Gally as she scrambled to her feet, yelling, "Get away from me!"

"Alright calm, calm, calm!" Gally said, holding up his hands towards her as she regained her footing.

"What the hell's your problem?" She shouted at him, the ringing in her ears nearly drowning out the noise of at least a dozen boys nearby tossing their work to the side and running towards them.

Gally had moved so that he was positioned between her and the opening in the wall. "Just relax!" He said authoritatively. She whipped around, turning to face the other Gladers as they arrived.

"What the hell is wrong with you guys?" She screamed at them amid cries of, "Woah, woah, woah," and "Take it easy!"

"Just calm down, alright?" Newt said, holding a hand towards her.

"No!" She snapped. "Why won't you tell me what's out there?"

"We're just trying to protect you, Greenbean." Alby said calmly.

"It's for your own good," Newt told her.

"Alright you guys can't just _keep_ me here!" She fought to keep the edge of desperation out of her voice.

"We can't let you leave." Alby insisted.

"Why not? She demanded.

A loud boom exploded through the air, making her jump. It was followed by a horrible crunching, grinding sound. She turned to the wall, stumbled backward. It felt as if the whole earth shook; she looked around, panicked.

She took a few trembling steps back for a better view, finding it hard to believe what her eyes were seeing. "What the hell," she murmured under her breath.

The enormous stone wall to the right of them seemed to defy every known law of physics as it slid along the ground, throwing sparks and dust as it moved, rock against rock. The crunching sound rattled her bones. She realized that only that wall was moving, heading for its neighbor to the left, ready to seal shut with its protruding rods slipping into the drilled holes across from it. She looked around at the other openings. It felt like her head was spinning faster than her body, and her stomach flipped over with the dizziness. On all four sides of the Glade, only the right walls were moving, toward the left, closing the gap of the Doors.

 _Impossible_ , she thought. _How can they do that?_ She fought the urge to run out there, slip past the moving slabs of rock before they shut, flee the Glade. Common sense won out—the maze held even more unknowns than her situation inside.

She tried to picture in her mind how the structure of it all worked. Massive stone walls, hundreds of feet high, moving like sliding glass doors—an image from her past life that flashed through her thoughts. She tried to grasp the memory, hold on to it, complete the picture with faces, names, a place, but it faded into obscurity. A pang of sadness pricked through her other swirling emotions.

She watched as the right wall reached the end of its journey, its connecting rods finding their mark and entering without a glitch. An echoing boom rumbled across the Glade as all four Doors sealed shut for the night. She felt one final moment of trepidation, a quick slice of fear through her body, and then it vanished.

It was quiet for a moment. Then, Gally looked at her and said, "Next time, I'm gonna _let_ you leave."

The crowd around her began to disperse, Gladers going back to their work. She looked around one more time, the _feel_ of the place completely different now that all the walls were solid with no way out. She tried to imagine the purpose of such a thing, and she didn't know which guess was worse—that they were being sealed in or that they were being protected from something _out there_. The thought stirred in her mind a million possibilities of what might live in the maze outside, all of them terrifying. Fear gripped her once again.

"Come _on_ ," Chuck said, pulling at her sleeve a second time. "Trust me, when nighttime strikes, you want to be as far away from these walls as you can get."

She knew she had no other choice. She did her best to suppress everything she was feeling and followed.

 _A/N:_ _If you guys haven't picked up on it, I decided to make Gally more approachable and likable and human, the way he was in the movie. I think it mkes more sense anyways, given the fact that Marisa is a girl and I don't think Gally'd be as openly aggressive towards her. Also, there's a history of girls in the Glade, which I'm going to include in the next chapter; the bonfire scene!_


	7. Chapter 7

_Disclaimer:_ _I own nothing from the Maze Runner Trilogy. All rights to James Daschner and the writers of the Maze Runner movie. The idea of the story is to replace a male protagonist with a female protagonist and see where that takes the plotline of the story, so much of the content written by Daschner, meaning actual paragraphs and sentences, are the same. I give all credit to Daschner for the words he's written. I've made the obvious alterations (changing 'he' and 'him' to 'she' and 'her', etc.) but it's truly an A/U story, so I've put my own spin on much of it._

Chapter Seven

In a few hours, she saw what Alby had meant by "something special."

As night began to settle across the Glade, the sound of drums began to waft across the grassy plains. She looked up from where she sat, leaning against the tree beside Chuck.

"What is that?" She asked. Chuck wasn't looking at her; his face was turned to the left, towards the edge of the wood, and he looked excited.

"You're in for a treat, Greenie," he told her. "C'mon."

Chuck got to his feet and grabbed her arm, began tugging her to her feet.

"Where are we— _Chuck_ , I can stand up by myself—where are we going? What's that noise?"

"Just come with me, you'll see." He started walking towards the noise, and when she looked, she saw what she'd missed before in the darkness—the pile of wood she'd seen earlier. It was easy to spot now that what seemed like the entire population of the Glade had congregated there.

She neared it on Chuck's heels, saw a flame flicker and then bloom at the head of a stick held in Alby's hand, like a torch. Several other Gladers, including Newt, Gally, and the muscly Asian kid she'd seen earlier, held out their own torches to Alby's, and the flames spread to light the tips of theirs too.

She stumbled to the edge of the circle of boys, losing Chuck in the crowd. She was too short to see around the boys in front of her, so she elbowed her way through to the front.

"Light 'em up!" Alby yelled, and he and the other boys with lit torches launched them like spears into the teepee of wood, which erupted into flame.

She looked around at the cacophony of noise that ensued; boys cheered and crowed, clapped and stamped their feet. The sound of drums she'd heard before came from what looked like homemade bongos that rested at the feet of several boys beating at them with their hands and sticks.

A flurry of limbs sent her stumbling backwards into somebody, and she was reminded of some distant image of a gymnast as a boy began flipping and somersaulting like an acrobat. Shouts of laughter rang in the air as he landed on his feet, and a taller boy threw an arm around the shoulders of the flipping boy, patting his chest while raising the other arm in the air and pumping his fist.

The boy she fell into guffawed, giving her a push forward. "You alright there, Greenie?" He hollered in her ear.

It was wild. She looked around, soaking it all in. Gally was sitting on a log bench, actually laughing. It greatly improved his appearance. Somebody was passing out glass jars full of sloshing liquid that glowed amber in the firelight. She felt a glass pressed into her hands as the crowd swept in, breaking ranks.

Glasses were raised, clinking together, but she ducked out from the crowd, overwhelmed. She found her way to the edge of the mass, dropping her jar on the way. When the noise wasn't pressing against her skull anymore, she flopped on the ground, back against a log.

She studied the outline of the trees, dark against darker, and tuned out all the noise. Her back to the boys behind her, she didn't see him coming until he took a seat beside her, twigs and grass crunching beneath his feet.

Newt.

She didn't say anything, didn't even turn her head—but she could see the hard line of his jaw. Newt didn't say anything either, which she appreciated. He just sat quietly next to her, watching the woods in silence, chewing on something toasted stuck to the end of a stick.

"Hell of a first day, Greenie," he said finally, looking over at her.

She looked down at her hands, entwined in her lap, but didn't say anything.

"Here," Newt picked up his glass jar, passing it to her. "Put some hair on your chest."

She scrunched up her face, jerking her head back. Newt chuckled. "Just an expression."

She paused before taking the jar. Newt settled back against the log as she raised it hesitantly to her lips. She took a sip, and immediately choked. It tasted disgusting—somehow earthy and acidic at the same time. She gagged, spewing the liquid in her mouth onto the grass at her feet.

Newt glanced over at her, laughing as she coughed.

"Oh my…God. What _is_ that?" She retched, passing the jar back to Newt, who took it.

"I don't even know," he laughed, shrugging as he craned his neck around towards the fire. "It's Gally's recipe. It's a trade secret."

She followed Newt's gaze to Gally, who stood in the midst of a huddle of boys, locked in a wrestle with someone. "Yeah well, he's still an asshole," she muttered, looking back at her hands.

She felt Newt watching her for a moment. "He saved your life today."

She looked up at him. There was a slight smile on his face. "Trust me," he took a sip of the drink, not even flinching. "The Maze is a dangerous place."

There was that word again. _Maze._ But instead of raising another question about it that was sure to remain unanswered, she said, "We're trapped here, aren't we?"

Newt didn't look at her, but a shadow that had nothing to do with the flickering flames seemed to pass over his face. "For the moment," he said, nodding slightly.

She felt her heart sink, and maybe Newt sensed it, because he looked over at her, meeting her eyes.

"But," he said, raising a finger on the hand clasped around his drink. He turned his upper body towards her, twisting all the way around until he was looking back over the log. "See those guys?" He asked, pointing with the same finger as she turned. "There, by the fire?"

She found the group of guys Newt was pointing at, six of seven of the older boys, more subdued than the rest, grouped around a cluster of crates and boxes slightly apart from the others. She nodded slightly.

"That guy in the middle there, that's Minho." She locked her sight on the Asian kid with the bulging biceps that she'd seen lighting the fire earlier. He was sitting on a crate, leaning forward with his arms folded over his knees, a drink in his hand.

"He's the _Keeper_ of the Runners," Newt told her. "Now every morning, when those doors open, they run the Maze. Mapping it, memorizing it, trying to find a way out."

She looked at Newt carefully. "How long have they been looking?" She asked him.

She sensed his hesitation before he replied. "Two years. A little more."

"And they haven't found _anything_?" She asked desperately.

Newt smiled at her somewhat sadly, turning to sit back against the log again. His shoulder was now pressed against hers. "It's a lot easier said than done," he told her. He raised a finger to his ear, turning his upper body to look at her fully. "Listen."

She fell silent, and over the crackling of the bonfire and the somewhat diminished noises of the Gladers, she heard it. The grinding, crunching noise of rocks—huge rocks—shifting against each other.

"Yeah?" Newt nodded at her, raising his eyebrows. "That's the Maze…changing." He lowered his hand, turning forward again. "Changes every night."

Now that Newt had pointed it out to her, the noise felt impossible to ignore. It echoed in her head, bouncing off her brain with the magnitude of its implications. "How's that even possible?" She whispered, more to herself than Newt.

Newt grinned a little, shaking his head as he shrugged. "You can ask the people who put us in here, if you ever meet the bastards." Newt looked away from her, watching his drink.

"Listen the _truth_ is, the Runners are the only ones that really know what's out there. They're the strongest and the fastest of us all, and it's a good thing too because if they don't make it back before those doors close"—He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder—"Then they're stuck out there for the night…" He looked at her unflinchingly. "And no one's ever survived a night in the Maze."

She could tell he wasn't being dramatic, wasn't trying to scare her. There was only honesty in those big brown eyes. She watched as he turned away from her, took another drink from his glass. She realized what she was doing and quickly looked away.

"What happens to them?" She asked.

Again, Newt hesitated. She had a feeling she was asking too many questions, but Newt still answering her, and she was too curious to relent. Newt sipped his drink again before answering. "Well we call 'em _Grievers_. Of course no one's ever… _seen_ one, and lived to tell about it. But they're out there."

He was quiet for a moment, and she sensed the weight of the topic, wondered about the history of terror these Grievers must have had on the Glade, to make Newt sound so tense.

"Right well," Newt set his glass down, turning to her. "That's enough questions for one night. C'mon." He sat forward as if to get up, placing a hand on her shoulder when she didn't move. "Listen, you're supposed to be the guest of _honor._ "

She looked up at him, startled. "Well I—no, nah—no, I—"

"No! No, no, come on." He picked up his glass, standing up. "Let me show you around."

"I—" She began, still protesting.

"Come on," Newt said, gripping her around the arm and pulling her to her feet.

Newt began to lead her around the ring of people surrounding the fire, pointing out different groups of people.

"Over there we've got the Builders," he told her, gesturing towards Gally and the wrestling circle, which was _oohing_ as Gally roughly tossed someone to the dirt. Newt turned to look at her, walking backwards. "They're very good with their hands, but not a lot going on up here." He tapped his temple with a finger.

She turned away from Gally, who was grinning as he helped up the boy he'd just thrown to the ground, as Newt continued. "And then there's Winston," Newt nodded at a tan boy with thick, dark eyebrows. Winston was leaning against a barrel, talking through a laugh as he pointed at another Glader. She thought he looked vaguely Middle Eastern.

"He's the Keeper of the Slicers," Newt told her. "And we've got some of the Medjacks, Clint and Jeff." Two boys walked past, and she recognized them as the ones that had been leaning over her when she came around in the Sick House after passing out. Newt slapped one of them on the back as they said hello, giving her a curious look as they ambled by.

"They spend most of their time bandaging up the Slicers," Newt added, grinning.

They had made their way fully around the circle, and were now at the edge of the wrestling pit again. Newt stopped, and she turned to face him.

"And what if I wanna be a Runner?" She asked him.

Newt laughed once, then caught sight of her face and stopped. "Have you listened to a word I just said? No one _wants_ to be a Runner. And besides, you get chosen—"

"Chosen by who?" She interrupted eagerly.

Newt opened her mouth to respond, but his eyes widened at something behind her. She didn't have a chance to look around before someone careened into her, and she tripped forwards.

"Woah!" She heard several voices call out as she barely managed to regain her footing. She turned around, straightening out her shirt as she registered what had happened. A boy—the one who'd ran into her—was being helped up by someone. Gally stood a few feet back, dusting dirt off his pants. She locked eyes with him.

"What d'you say, Greenie?" He asked, cocking an eyebrow. "Wanna see what you're made of?"

She didn't have a chance to respond before a boy to her left—Jeff, the Medjack—started chanting. "Greenie, Greenie, Greenie…"

Soon the majority of the Gladers had taken up the chant. She looked around, saw Gally smirking cockily amidst the sea of excited faces. Minho, the Keeper of the Runners, looked up curiously from the crates. The chant increased in both volume and tempo as more boys gathered around.

Jeff walked behind her, slapping her shoulder as he passed. Gally beckoned her forward with a hand. The chant climaxed as the Gladers began to holler and clap, cheering her on. She never agreed, but the boys had reformed a circle around her and Gally, who was pushing up his sleeves.

"Alright," he said. "The rules are simple, Greenie." He began walking around the edge of the ring, and she found herself imitating him. "I try to push you out of the circle…you try to last more than five seconds."

Most of the Gladers laughed at this, but a few called out.

"Go easy on the Greenie, Gally," someone shouted.

"Gally, she's little. Watch yourself." This came from Alby, his voice laced with warning.

She bristled indignantly, and something lit inside her, fueling her on.

"Ready?" Gally asked her.

"Yeah," she nodded, her voice hoarse and quiet.

Before she even raised her hands, Gally had crossed the space between them. His hands crashed into her shoulders, and she reeled back into the wall of boys behind her. Hands caught her, shoved her forwards into the ring again. She'd barely regained her footing when Gally stepped up to her, pushing her forwards so that she fell to the ground on her stomach.

He hadn't even pushed her that hard—he'd mostly just used her own momentum from being propelled forwards—but the shouts of laughter and excitement shifted somewhat, some of them jeering at Gally instead.

"Gally, c'mon man."

"Watch it!"

Instead of being comforted by this, she felt angered and annoyed. She was the only girl, but that didn't mean she couldn't hold her own. She spat the gritty dirt from her mouth, wiped her face as she lifted herself up, twisting around slightly to look at Gally.

He was standing behind her, not moving. "C'mon Greenie," he said, dancing backwards. "We're not done yet."

Shouts of encouragement mixed in with the whoops and jeers now, and, emboldened by this, she scrambled to her feet and said, "Quit calling me 'Greenie.'"

The Gladers around them quieted. "Quit calling you that?" Gally asked her. "What d'you wanna be called? Shank?" Some people laughed. "What do you think, boys? Does she look like a shank?" He asked, as Gladers shouted out yes's and chanted 'Shank, shank, shank!'.

She leapt forward, launching herself into Gally. She locked her arms around his midsection, and they struggled for about ten seconds before Gally got a grip around her shoulders and threw her to the ground. Another chorus of "Oh's," some indignant, others excited as she struggled to her feet, coughing.

"You know what? I think I've settled on Shank," Gally said, grinning wickedly at her as Gladers laughed.

Enraged, she flew forward, slamming into Gally's stomach with her shoulder. She actually heard the breath leave his lungs as he grabbed her shoulders and began to force her back. Her heels dug into the dirt, sending up a spray of pebbles and dust.

Somehow, she knew what to do. As fast as she could, she released Gally and slid out from around him, jumping to the side. Without her body to lean against, Gally fell forward to his knees.

The Gladers cried out in shock, and then began to cheer as she straightened up, panting. "Not bad for a Greenie, huh?" She gasped. Gally took her by surprise, lashed out with his legs. As he kicked out, his foot swept under the back of her feet and she felt her legs fly out from under her.

She fell to the ground, and her head cracked against a rock. "Oh!" She grunted, coughing as she tried to catch her breath. There were worried noises coming from the Gladers, and she saw stars flash in her eyes.

For a moment, she laid there. Then she gasped, and it had nothing to do with the fall.

 _Marisa_.

Her name. It echoed through her skull. _Marisa._

"Marisa," she whispered, and the Gladers fell silent. "Marisa," she repeated, louder this time, sitting up. It was her name, she was sure of it. She jumped to her feet. "Marisa!" She said, loudly, looking around at everyone. They watched her with wide eyes. She laughed. "I remember my name! It's Marisa!"

The Gladers were all quiet for a minute. Marisa saw Chuck look around at Newt excitedly. Then—"MARISA!" Alby shouted at the top of his lungs. The rest of the Gladers burst into noise, shouting her name and cheering as they neared her.

Hands patted her on the back, grabbed her shoulders, mussed her hair. "Welcome home, Marisa," said a tall black kid, passing her a jar of Gally's secret drink and grinning from ear to ear. People laughed, boys smiled brightly at her. The cheering increased as she pressed her lips to the rim of the jar, swallowed a sizable amount of the drink. She recoiled at the taste, sticking her tongue out as she shook her head.

Then Gally was there, leaning forward, clasping her free hand in his. "Good job," he said. "…Marisa." Marisa nodded at him, smiling slightly. She opened her mouth to respond when a scream rent the air.

Everyone turned, not to the Sick Room, but to the walls of the Glade. It wasn't Ben, wailing in pain from the Changing. It was something, if possible, even more sinister. It was ringed with something metallic, and also animal. The silence following it was deafening, even the fire seemed to stop crackling.

"What the hell was that?" Marisa whispered. A couple boys looked over at her, but it was Gally who answered.

"That my friend…was a Griever." He took a deep breath, and Marisa could see he was shaken. "Don't worry, you're safe here with us," he told her. "Nothing gets through those walls."

"Alright guys," Alby said loudly. "Let's tuck it in for the night. Come on," he clapped his hands a few times, and the Gladers began to disperse. "It was a good night."

Someone passed Marisa, resting a congratulatory hand on her shoulder as he did. Then another. The boy who had given her the drink, Frypan, she heard someone call him, shook her hand and nodded at her as he turned to walk away. Marisa nodded back, feeling very sober, despite her recent excitement.

An hour later, Marisa was lying in a soft sleeping bag next to Chuck on a bed of grass near the gardens. It was a wide lawn that she hadn't noticed before, and quite a few of the group chose it as their bedtime spot. Marisa thought that was strange, but apparently there wasn't enough room inside the Homestead. At least it was warm. Which made her wonder for the millionth time where they were. Her mind had a hard time grasping names of places, or remembering countries or rulers, how the world was organized. And none of the kids in the Glade had a clue, either — at least, they weren't sharing if they did.

She lay in silence for the longest time, looking at the stars and listening to the soft murmurs of various conversations drifting across the Glade. Sleep felt miles away, and she couldn't shake the despair and hopelessness that coursed through her body and mind — the temporary joy of remembering her name had long since faded away. It'd been one endless — and strange — day.

It was just so...weird. She remembered lots of little things about life — eating, clothes, studying, playing, general images of the makeup of the world. But any detail that would fill in the picture to create a true and complete memory had been erased somehow. It was like looking at an image through a foot of muddy water. More than anything else, perhaps, she felt...sad.

Chuck interrupted her thoughts. "Well, Greenie, you survived First Day."

"Barely." Not now, Chuck, she wanted to say. I'm not in the mood.

Chuck pulled himself up to lean on an elbow, looking at her. "You'll learn a lot in the next couple of days, start getting used to things. Good that?"

"Um, yeah, good that, I guess. Where'd all these weird words and phrases come from, anyway?" It seemed like they'd taken some other language and melded it with her own.

Chuck flopped back down with a heavy flump. "I don't know — I've only been here a month, remember?"

Marisa wondered about Chuck, whether he knew more than he let on. He was a quirky kid, funny, and he seemed innocent, but who was to say? Really he was just as mysterious as everything else in the Glade.

A few minutes passed, and Marisa felt the long day finally catch up to her, the leaded edge of sleep crossing over her mind. But — like a fist had shoved it in her brain and let go — a thought popped into her head. One that she didn't expect, and she wasn't sure from where it came. Suddenly, the Glade, the walls, the Maze — it all seemed ... familiar. Comfortable. A warmth of calmness spread through her chest, and for the first time since she'd found herself there, she didn't feel like the Glade was the worst place in the universe. She stilled, felt her eyes widen, her breathing stop for a long moment. _What just happened?_ she thought. _What changed?_ Ironically, the feeling that things would be okay made her slightly uneasy.

Not quite understanding how, she knew what she needed to do. She didn't get it. The feeling — the epiphany — was a strange one, foreign and familiar at the same time. But it felt ... right.

"I want to be one of those guys that goes out there," she said aloud, not knowing if Chuck was still awake. "Inside the Maze."

"Huh?" was the response from Chuck. Marisa could hear a tinge of annoyance in his voice.

"Runners," Marisa said, wishing she knew where this was coming from. "Whatever they're doing out there, I want in."

"You don't even know what you're talking about," Chuck grumbled, and rolled over. "Go to sleep."

Marisa felt a new surge of confidence, even though she truly didn't know what she was talking about. "I want to be a Runner."

Chuck turned back and got up on his elbow. "You can forget that little thought right now."

Marisa wondered at Chuck's reaction, but pressed on. "Don't try to — "

"Marisa. Newbie. My new friend. Forget it."

"I'll tell Alby tomorrow." _A Runner_ , Marisa thought. _I don't even know what that means. Have I gone completely insane?_

Chuck lay down with a laugh. "You're a piece of klunk. Go to sleep."

But Marisa couldn't quit. "Something out there — it feels familiar."

"Go...to...sleep."

Then it hit her—she felt like several pieces of a puzzle had been put together. She didn't know what the ultimate picture would be, but her next words almost felt like they were coming from someone else. "Chuck, I...I think I've been here before."

She heard her friend sit up, heard the intake of breath. But Marisa rolled over and refused to say another word, worried she'd mess up this new sense of being encouraged, eradicate the reassuring calm that filled her heart.

Sleep came much more easily than she'd expected.


	8. Chapter 8

_Disclaimer:_ _I own nothing from the Maze Runner Trilogy. All rights to James Daschner and the writers of the Maze Runner movie. The idea of the story is to replace a male protagonist with a female protagonist and see where that takes the plotline of the story, so much of the content written by Daschner, meaning actual paragraphs and sentences, are the same. I give all credit to Daschner for the words he's written. I've made the obvious alterations (changing 'he' and 'him' to 'she' and 'her', etc.) but it's truly an A/U story, so I've put my own spin on much of it._

Chapter Eight

Someone shook Marisa awake. Her eyes snapped open to see a too-close face staring down at her, everything around them still shadowed by the darkness of early morning. She opened her mouth to speak but a cold hand clamped down on it, gripping it shut. Panic flared until she saw who it was. "Shh, Greenie. Don't wanna be wakin' Chuckie, now, do we?"

It was Newt; his breath hung in the air, somehow minty and sweet-smelling.

Though Marisa was surprised, any alarm melted away immediately. She couldn't help being curious, wondering what he wanted with her. Marisa nodded, doing her best to say yes with her eyes, until Newt finally took his hand away, then leaned back on his heels.

"Come on, Greenie," the tall boy whispered as he stood. He reached down and helped her to her feet — he was so strong it felt like he could rip Marisa's arm off. "Supposed to show ya somethin' before the wake-up."

Any lingering haze of sleep had already vanished from Marisa's mind. "Okay," she said simply, ready to follow. She knew she should hold some suspicion, having no reason to trust anyone yet, but the curiosity won out. She quickly leaned over and slipped on her shoes. "Where are we going?"

"Just follow me. And stay close." They snuck their way through the tightly strewn pack of sleeping bodies, Marisa almost tripping several times.

Once they left the lawn area and stepped onto the hard gray stone of the courtyard floor, Newt broke into a run, heading for the western wall. Marisa hesitated at first, wondering why she needed to run, but snapped out of it quickly and followed at the same pace.

The light was dim, but any obstructions loomed as darker shadows and she was able to make her way quickly along. She stopped when Newt did, right next to the massive wall towering above them like a skyscraper — another random image that floated in the murky pool of her memory wipe. Marisa noticed small red lights flashing here and there along the wall's face, moving about, stopping, turning off and on.

"What are those?" she whispered as loudly as she dared, wondering if her voice sounded as shaky as she felt. The twinkling red glow of the lights held an undercurrent of warning. Newt stood just a couple of feet in front of the thick curtain of ivy on the wall. "When you need to know, you'll know, Greenie."

"Well, it's kind of stupid to send me to a place where nothing makes sense and not answer my questions." Marisa paused, surprised at herself. " _Shank_ ," she added, throwing all the sarcasm she could into the syllable.

Newt broke out in a laugh, but quickly cut it off. "I like you, Greenie. Now shut it and let me show ya somethin'."

Newt stepped forward and dug his hands into the thick ivy, spreading several vines away from the wall to reveal a dust-frosted window, a square about two feet wide. It was dark at the moment, as if it had been painted black.

"What're we looking for?" Marisa whispered.

"Hold up a second, love. One'll be comin' along soon enough."

A minute passed, then two. Several more. Marisa fidgeted on her feet, wondering how Newt could stand there, perfectly patient and still, staring into nothing but darkness. Then it changed.

Glimmers of an eerie light shone through the window; it cast a wavering spectrum of colors on Newt's body and face, as if he stood next to a lighted swimming pool. Marisa grew perfectly still, squinting, trying to make out what was on the other side. A thick lump grew in her throat. _What is that?_ she thought.

"Out there's the Maze," Newt whispered, eyes wide as if in a trance. "Everything we do — our whole life, Greenie — revolves around the Maze. Every lovin' second of every lovin' day we spend in honor of the Maze, tryin' to solve somethin' that's not shown us it has a bloody solution, ya know? And we want to show ya why it's not to be messed with. Show ya why them buggin' walls close shut every night. Show ya why you should never, never find your butt out there."

Newt stepped back, still holding on to the ivy vines. He gestured for Marisa to take his place and look through the window.

She did, leaning forward until her nose touched the cool surface of the glass. It took a second for her eyes to focus on the moving object on the other side, to look past the grime and dust and see what Newt wanted her to see. And when she did, she felt her breath catch in her throat, like an icy wind had blown down there and frozen the air solid.

A large, bulbous creature the size of a cow but with no distinct shape twisted and seethed along the ground in the corridor outside. It climbed the opposite wall, then leaped at the thick-glassed window with a loud thump. Marisa gasped before she could stop herself, jerked away from the window — but the thing bounced backward, leaving the glass undamaged.

Marisa sucked in two huge breaths and leaned in once again. It was too dark to make out clearly, but odd lights flashed from an unknown source, revealing blurs of silver spikes and glistening flesh. Wicked instrument-tipped appendages protruded from its body like arms: a saw blade, a set of shears, long rods whose purpose could only be guessed.

The creature was a horrific mix of animal and machine, and seemed to realize it was being observed, seemed to know what lay inside the walls of the Glade, seemed to want to get inside and feast on human flesh. Marisa felt an icy terror blossom in her chest, expand like a tumor, making it hard to breathe. Even with the memory wipe, she felt sure she'd never seen something so truly awful.

She stepped back, the courage she'd felt the previous evening melting away.

Something shivered in her gut, and she wondered if she'd ever be able to eat again. "Was that a—"

"Griever, yeah," Newt nodded. "Nasty bugger, eh? Just be glad the Grievers only come out at night. Be thankful for these walls."

Marisa swallowed, wondering how she could ever go out there. Her desire to become a Runner had taken a major blow. But she had to do it. Somehow she knew she had to do it. It was such an odd thing to feel, especially after what she'd just seen.

Newt looked at the window absently. "Now you know what bloody lurks in the Maze, love. Now you know this isn't joke time. You've been sent to the Glade, Greenie, and we'll be expectin' ya to survive and help us do what we've been sent here to do."

"And what's that?" Marisa asked, even though she was terrified to hear the answer. Newt turned to look her dead in the eye. The first traces of dawn had crept up on them, and Marisa could see every detail of Newt's face, his skin tight, his brow creased.

"Find our way out, Greenie," Newt said. "Solve the buggin' Maze and find our way home."

A couple of hours later, the doors having reopened, rumbling and grumbling and shaking the ground until they were finished, Marisa sat at a worn, tilted picnic table outside the Homestead. All she could think about was the Grievers, what their purpose could be, what they did out there during the night. What it would be like to be attacked by something so terrible.

She tried to get the image out of her head, move on to something else. The Runners. They'd just left without saying a word to anybody, bolting into the Maze at full speed and disappearing around corners. She pictured them in her mind as she picked at her eggs and bacon with a fork, speaking to no one, not even Chuck, who ate silently next to her. The poor guy had exhausted himself trying to start a conversation with Marisa, who'd refused to respond. All she wanted was to be left alone.

She just didn't get it; her brain was on overload trying to compute the sheer impossibility of the situation. How could a maze, with walls so massive and tall, be so big that dozens of kids hadn't been able to solve it after two years? How could such a structure exist? And more importantly, why? What could possibly be the purpose of such a thing? Why were they all there? How long had they been there?

Try as she might to avoid it, her mind still kept wandering back to the image of the vicious Griever. Its phantom brother seemed to leap at her every time she blinked or rubbed her eyes.

Marisa knew she was a smart kid — she somehow felt it in her bones. But nothing about this place made any sense. Except for one thing. She was supposed to be a Runner. Why did she feel that so strongly? And even now, after seeing what lived in the maze?

A tap on her shoulder jarred her from her thoughts; she looked up to see Alby standing behind her, arms folded.

"Ain't you lookin' fresh?" Alby said. "Get a nice view out the window this morning?"

Marisa stood, hoping for a distraction from her gloomy thoughts. "Enough to make me want to learn about this place," she said eagerly.

Alby nodded, grinning. "Me and you, shank. The Tour begins now." He started to move but then stopped, holding up a finger. "Ain't no questions till the end, you get me? Ain't got time to jaw with you all day."

"But..." Marisa stopped when Alby's eyebrows shot up. She groaned. "But tell me everything — I wanna know everything."

She'd decided the night before not to tell anyone else how strangely familiar the place seemed, the odd feeling that he'd been there before — that she could remember things about it. Sharing that seemed like a very bad idea.

"I'll tell ya what I wanna tell ya, Greenie. Let's go."

"Can I come?" Chuck asked from the table.

Alby reached down and tweaked the boy's ear.

"Ow!" Chuck shrieked.

"Ain't you got a job, slinthead?" Alby asked. "Lots of sloppin' to do?" Chuck rolled his eyes, then looked at Marisa. "Have fun."

"I'll try." She suddenly felt sorry for Chuck, wished people would treat the kid better. But there was nothing she could do about it — it was time to go. She walked away with Alby, hoping the Tour had officially begun.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

They started at the Box, which was closed at the moment — double doors of metal lying flat on the ground, covered in white paint, faded and cracked. The day had brightened considerably, the shadows stretching in the opposite direction from what Marisa had seen yesterday. She still hadn't spotted the sun, but it looked like it was about to pop over the eastern wall at any minute.

Alby pointed down at the doors. "This here's the Box. Once a month, we get a Newbie like you, never fails. Once a week, we get supplies, clothes, some food. Ain't needin' a lot —pretty much run ourselves in the Glade."

Marisa nodded, her whole body itching with the desire to ask questions. _I need some tape to put over my mouth,_ she thought.

"We don't know jack about the Box, you get me?" Alby continued. "Where it came from, how it gets here, who's in charge. The shanks that sent us here ain't told us nothin'. We got all the electricity we need, grow and raise most of our food, get clothes and such. Tried to send a slinthead Greenie back in the Box one time — thing wouldn't move till we took him out."

Marisa wondered what lay under the doors when the Box wasn't there, but held her tongue. She felt such a mixture of emotions — curiosity, frustration, wonder — all laced with the lingering horror of seeing the Griever that morning.

Alby kept talking, looking her right in the eye every time. She could see why this guy had been picked for a leader—he had a way of commanding your silence. "Glade's cut into four sections." He held up his fingers as he counted off the next four words. "Gardens, Blood House, Homestead, Deadheads. You got that?"

Marisa hesitated, then shook her head, confused.

Alby's eyelids fluttered briefly as he continued; he looked amused. He pointed to the northeast corner, where the fields and fruit trees were located. "Gardens — where we grow the crops. Water's pumped in through pipes in the ground — always has been, or we'd have starved to death a long time ago. Never rains here. Never." He pointed to the southeast corner, at the animal pens and barn. "Blood House — where we raise and slaughter animals." He pointed at the pitiful living quarters. "Homestead — stupid place is twice as big than when the first of us got here because we keep addin' to it when they send us wood and klunk. Ain't pretty, but it works. Most of us sleep outside anyway."

Marisa felt dizzy. So many questions splintered her mind she couldn't keep them straight. Alby pointed to the southwest corner, the forest area fronted with several sickly trees and benches. "Call that the Deadheads. Graveyard's back in that corner, in the thicker woods. Ain't much else. You can go there to sit and rest, hang out, whatever." He cleared his throat, as if wanting to change subjects. "You'll spend the next two weeks working one day apiece for our different job Keepers — until we know what you're best at. Slopper, Bricknick, Bagger, Track-hoe — somethin'll stick, always does. Come on."

Alby walked toward the South Door, located between what he'd called the Deadheads and the Blood House. Marisa followed, wrinkling her nose up at the sudden smell of dirt and manure coming from the animal pens. _Graveyard?_ she thought. _Why do they need a graveyard in a place full of teenagers?_ That disturbed her even more than not knowing some of the words Alby kept saying — words like Slopper and Bagger — that didn't sound so good. She came as close to interrupting Alby as she'd done so far, but willed her mouth shut.

Frustrated, she turned her attention to the pens in the Blood House area. Several cows nibbled and chewed at a trough full of greenish hay. Pigs lounged in a muddy pit, an occasionally flickering tail the only sign they were alive. Another pen held sheep, and there were chicken coops and turkey cages as well. Workers bustled about the area, looking as if they'd spent their whole lives on a farm.

 _Why do I remember these animals?_ Marisa wondered. Nothing about them seemed new or

interesting — she knew what they were called, what they normally ate, what they looked

like. Why was stuff like that still lodged in her memory, but not where she'd seen animals

before, or with whom? Her memory loss was baffling in its complexity.

Alby pointed to the large barn in the back corner, its red paint long faded to a dull rust

color. "Back there's where the Slicers work. Nasty stuff, that. Nasty. If you like blood, you

can be a Sheer."

Marisa shook her head. Sheer didn't sound good at all. As they kept walking, she focused

her attention on the other side of the Glade, the section Alby had called the Deadheads. The

trees grew thicker and denser the farther back in the corner they went, more alive and full

of leaves. Dark shadows filled the depths of the wooded area, despite the time of day.

Marisa looked up, squinting to see that the sun was finally visible, though it looked odd —

more orange than it should be. It hit her that this was yet another example of the odd

selective memory in her mind.

She returned her gaze to the Deadheads, a glowing disk still floating in her vision. Blinking

to clear it away, she suddenly caught the red lights again, flickering and skittering about

deep in the darkness of the woods. _What are those things?_ she wondered, irritated that Alby

hadn't answered her earlier. The secrecy was very annoying.

As they walked—she could tell Alby was taking her to the portion of the wall near the Deadheads—Marisa looked around. The sun cast a golden glow everywhere. The long grass tickled her shins, waving lazily in the breeze. Despite everything, it was kind of beautiful.

"It's pretty peaceful here," she said softly. She cut her eyes immediately to Alby, worried he was going to scoff, think she was stupid for calling a place like this peaceful. His answer surprised her.

"I know it's hard to believe, but it wasn't always this way." He looked at her. "We had dark days…Lost a lotta boys to fear, to panic." He paused at the wall, turning and surveying the spread of the Glade before him. Marisa did the same. "But we've come far since then," he told her. "Established order…made peace."

Marisa furrowed her brow, confused at the change in conversation. "Why are you telling me this?" She asked him.

"Because you're not like the others," he told her, and she sensed that he wasn't referring to her being a girl. "You're curious…but you're one of us now." He pulled a ragged knife from his pocket. "You need to know what that means."

He took her hand and pressed the handle into her palm. Then he pointed to the wall without looking. Marisa followed his finger, eyes widening as she took in the wall. There had to be at least sixty names chiseled into the hard gray stone.

She felt Alby's eyes on her as she stepped closer, examining the names. There were some she recognized—Chuck, Winston, Newt—many she didn't recognize—Doug, RT, Joshua—and a few with heavy lines scratched through them—Stephen, George, Nick.

"What happened to them?" She asked quietly, pointing with the knife at one of the scratched-out names, though she had a feeling she already knew the answer.

"Like I said," Alby said, and she looked at him. "Dark days, Marisa."

She swallowed, nodding as she stepped forward. She found a blank space next to Winston's name and beneath Alby's, and raised the knife. It took several minutes, but she finally stepped back, her name roughly carved into the stone and her hand cramping slightly.

Wordlessly Alby started walking, and Marisa was surprised when they'd reached the South Door; the two walls bracketing the exit towered above them. The thick slabs of gray stone were cracked and covered in ivy, as ancient as anything Marisa could imagine. She craned her neck to see the top of the walls far above; her mind spun with the odd sensation that she was looking down, not up. She staggered back a step, awed once again by the structure of her new home, then finally returned her attention to Alby, who had his back to the exit. "Out there's the Maze." Alby jabbed a thumb over his shoulder, then paused. Marisa stared in that direction, through the gap in the walls that served as an exit from the Glade.

The corridors out there looked much the same as the ones she'd seen from the window by the East Door early that morning. This thought gave her a chill, made her wonder if a Griever might come charging toward them at any minute. She took a step backward before realizing what she was doing. _Calm down_ , she chided herself, embarrassed.

Alby spoke. "Two years, I've been here. Ain't none been here longer. The few before me are already dead." Marisa felt her eyes widen, her heart quicken as she thought of the crossed-out names on the wall. "Two years we've tried to solve this thing, no luck. Shuckin' walls move out there at night just as much as these here doors. Mappin' it out ain't easy, ain't easy nohow." He nodded toward the concrete-blocked building into which the Runners had disappeared the night before.

Another stab of pain sliced through Marisa's head — there were too many things to compute at once. The walls moved out in the Maze? How many had died? She stepped forward, wanting to see the Maze for herself, as if the answers were printed on the walls out there.

Alby held out an arm and wrapped it around her midsection, sending her stumbling backward with one push.

"Ain't no goin' out there, shank."

Marisa had to suppress her pride. "Why not?"

"You think I sent Newt to ya before the wake-up just for kicks? Freak, that's the Number One Rule, the only one you'll never be forgiven for breaking. Ain't nobody — _nobody_ — allowed in the Maze except the Runners. Break that rule, and if you ain't killed by the Grievers, we'll kill you ourselves, you get me?"

Marisa nodded, grumbling inside, sure that Alby was exaggerating. Hoping that he was. Either way, if she'd had any doubt about what she'd told Chuck the night before, it had now completely vanished. She wanted to be a Runner. She would be a Runner. Deep inside she knew she had to go out there, into the Maze. Despite everything she'd learned and witnessed firsthand, it called to her as much as hunger or thirst.

A movement up on the left wall of the South Door caught her attention. Startled, she reacted quickly, looking just in time to see a flash of silver. A patch of ivy shook as the thing disappeared into it.

Marisa pointed up at the wall. "What was that?" she asked before she could be shut down again.

Alby didn't bother looking. "No questions till the end, Marisa. How many times I gotta tell ya?" He paused, then let out a sigh. "Beetle blades — it's how the Creators watch us. You better not—"

He was cut off by a booming, ringing alarm that sounded from all directions. Marisa clamped her hands to her ears, looking around as the siren blared, her heart about to thump its way out of her chest. But when she focused back on Alby, she stopped.

Alby wasn't acting scared — he appeared ... confused. Surprised. The alarm clanged through the air.

"What's going on?" Marisa asked. Relief flooded her chest that her tour guide didn't seem to think the world was about to end — but even so, Marisa was getting tired of being hit by waves of panic.

"That's weird" was all Alby said as he scanned the Glade, squinting. Marisa noticed people in the Blood House pens glancing around, apparently just as confused. One shouted to Alby, a short, skinny kid drenched in mud.

"What's up with that?" the boy asked, looking to Marisa for some reason.

"I don't know," Alby murmured back in a distant voice.

But Marisa couldn't stand it anymore. "Alby! What's going on?"

"The Box, Marisa, the Box!" was all Alby said before he set off for the middle of the Glade at a brisk pace that almost looked to Marisa like panic.

"What about it?" Marisa demanded, hurrying to catch up. Talk to me! she wanted to scream at him.

But Alby didn't answer or slow down, and as they got closer to the box Marisa could see that dozens of kids were running around the courtyard. She spotted Newt and called to him, trying to suppress her rising fear, telling herself things would be okay, that there had to be a reasonable explanation.

"Newt, what's going on!" she yelled.

Newt glanced over at her, then nodded and walked over, strangely calm in the middle of the chaos. He reached out and touched her on the arm. "Means a bloody Newbie's comin' up in the Box." He paused as if expecting Marisa to be impressed. "Right now."

"So?" As Marisa looked more closely at Newt, she realized that what she'd mistaken for calm was actually disbelief — maybe even excitement.

"So?" Newt replied, his jaw dropping slightly. "Greenie, we've never had two Newbies show up in the same month, much less two days in a row."

And with that, he ran off toward the Homestead.


End file.
